The first time I heard this song was last year when the choir went to Roma. The director played the CD track that “The King Singers” album. They are so great, I was impressed by this song. And it went quit well in the concert in Roma. The audiences liked it very much.
Here’s the lyric:
Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone
Feeding her flock near to the mountain side.
The shepherds knew not,
they knew not whither she was gone,
But after her lover Amyntas hied,
Up and down he wandered
while she was missing;
When he found her,
O then they fell a-kissing.
The story of the song is: a shepherd was feeding her flocks in the mountain lonely, and her boyfriend Amyntas was looking for her but other shepherds didn’t know where was she either. So he went up and down of the mountain, finally found her and then they fell a kissing…
Isn’t it a funny song? It was published in 1599 by John Farmer. In Wikipedia it says:
An English madrigal is different fro m an Italian madrigal because it uses nonsense syllables like fa la la la la to characterize the piece. Farmer uses clever word painting. For example, in the opening line “Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone”, Farmer had only the soprano sing since she was all alone. In the next line “Feeding her flock near to the mountain side”, all the voices sang since it was her flock. Additionally, the second phrase, which begins with “Up and down he wandered” and ends with “then they fell a-kissing” repeats, causing the elision “kissing up and down.”
I like the “up and down” part, feel so active when hearing this song.
Can’t wait to listen?
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